Sylvia

Within certain crowds last year, Sylvia was all the rage and for the first time in a while, it was worth the rave.

Sylvia is a fantasy based thriller about a young man who grows up with a mysterious girl whom he meets with at night. As the tag line of this movie goes “when you are asleep in this world, you are awake in another”, so does he meet with Sylvia in the other world where he’s awake at night. She is not just his night time companion, but she also helps him with many things in his real life – when he needs help with his homework she has the answers, when he needs to overcome a fear she is his go to resource, but when it’s time for him to fall in love he goes for another. You know what they say, “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” so you might as well go ahead and call Sylvia your ‘lady fury’.

Thrillers of this kind are not generally the type that nollywood audiences would reach to – if they even decide to reach towards thrillers at all. However, the makers of Sylvia are able to circumvent many of the usual pitfalls. They don’t reach for unknown faces to lead the film, instead they entice you with the actors that you know and love. And after they have your attention, they do not attempt to pull off a magic show with multiple rigimaroles to impress you. At its basest, Sylvia works because it is based on principles that most can empathize with. The magic of the writing here is that even though technically this is kind of weird, kind of messed up and our lead man – Richie – is kind of in a helpless situation, you can still completely empathize with Sylvia when she comes after him. There is a humanity to our villain such that even though she is technically very very bad she still has our hearts to an extent.

Having said that, the story is still not without its plot holes. There are a few aspects of the story that are almost left up in the air for the audience to do whatever with. It works because these plot holes aren’t so pivotal that the message of the story won’t come across without them being filled; and also the writer doesn’t owe us spoon-feeding or an explanation. The aspects I am talking about here are things like how Sylvia came to be, what’s the full story behind the red hibiscus flower, how come Sylvia can materialize and why did she wait until now to do so, and things of that nature.

Then there was the casting. Casting director, Kemi Lala Akindoju, switches up the scene for every single one of our leads here. Ini Dima-Okojie resigns the rude b**** role and takes on a warmer kindhearted persona as Gbemi. In this film, she shows us that she is not a one-trick pony. Chris Attoh switches up from the cool, calm and collected suave lover boy and becomes a fumbling mumbling mess of a half-man who can barely do a thing without his spirit girlfriend – and he does it beautifully.

And then there was Zainab. Zainab switches it up from… *crickets*… actually, Zainab doesn’t have a trope. From her comical wedding planner role in The Wedding Party, to the emotional performance of God Calling and her laid back character in Royal Hibiscus Hotel, she is everything and anything she needs to be. In the beginning parts of this movie before the revenge begins, Zainab is okay and maybe ‘good’ at best. But in that one scene, in that one shot, in that one moment when she goes from being bent over in tears to having evil glaze her eyes over, she possesses us all. It is a magical collaboration between actor, director, editor, writer, cinematography and music composer for that one shot.  She is the villain that you hope to never meet and she does it with such beautiful control that it never becomes forced, it never becomes over done, but she never looses the venom.

My least favorite part of this movie, however, would have to be the lighting. It was the first thing that struck me right after the beautiful opening sequence. There are just too many beautifully melaninated people for it to be acceptable to have them all walking around looking like blue hazes for seventy percent of the movie. There are shots where the light hits them beautifully and those moments stand out, there is also the possibility that this is the theme and grading of the movie. However, it’s just hard to believe that having beautifully black people look like blue men is anybody’s theme.

At the end of this movie you are hit with the realization of how different it was (especially for nollywood), yet how familiar it felt. There is no moment of drag here as the story evolves and pulls the audience along. Granted, the unfolding of events at the end was very stereotypical for movies like this. However, it didn’t take away even half a feather especially considering that there’s not many movies like this in our world of nollywood.